The movie recommendation section of THiNC. is out of control (see that red tab at the bottom of the screen – that). Like, mental. You guys keep throwing movies at me like a Pirate Sea Captain whipping the men at his oars. I’m slogging below deck and you guys just collectively keep throwing movies at me just to see where my breaking point might be! Hahahah. So, with that in mind, I’ve flipped things around a little bit. Now, all the recommendations are sorted by the number of votes they’ve gotten from you all. So if you see one on the list that you’d like to talk about here, upvote it. Got it? And please know, I prefer newer movies to older ones. And I DEFINITELY don’t prefer television series. Oh, my gosh. Gah. hahaha. But if it’s really really mind blowingly good, maybe I’ll look at it. But yeah, movies like Faults, Remainder, The Favourite, these are the kinds of movies I want to talk to you guys about! This is what goodness looks like.
Today we have something of an anomaly here on THiNC. – this time we have a Chinese mindjob movie. Being a mindjob fanatic, generally speaking, I don’t see many films that are coming from China that really speak to me. Germany, England, Europe, Latin America? Sure. I don’t mind reading my movies (as opposed to many Americans – but please, for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t dub them. Gah.) and love the fact that independent film is alive and well throughout the rest of the world…even if Hollywood is doing its best to try and kill it. But I digress. Right, today is the movie Reset. (ROW! ROW! ROW!!! Ok ok ok. I get it.)
And because many of my faithful readers (hey there – through my magic interwebs mirror I see you Belinda, and Marco, and Phillipe, and Guillermo! I see Fran, and Helga. OK, sorry, I can’t keep this up, I’m laughing too hard over here. You guys do realize I literally do this for kicks and giggles right? Those ads that perforate these pages basically cover my hosting fees. So when I sit at this keyboard, day after day, I gotta do something to stay sane!) probably haven’t seen this movie already, here is the quick precis. No. Just go watch it – I should be trusted by you by now. Just go find it on Prime. And don’t read anything else further down the page.
Quick Reset Highlights
As Reset kicks off, we learn that company A has built a time machine that actually wormholes backwards in time. And company B (an American company by the way – funny to see America as the bad guy) got close, but started doing human testing too soon – and the test subjects went mad and revolted. Right. Well, one of the test subjects Tsui Hu, when his family dies in a plane crash, decides he’s going to attack company A in order to help encourage them to push their window further back in time, ostensibly so he can rescue his family. So, they attack company A’s building, blow stuff up, and Xia – the lead scientist on the program – and her son Doudou, are abducted. And ultimately Doudou dies. And from there the plot writes itself. The mechanics are all in place.
Chinese Movie Reset and the Time Jumps
Alright, in order to keep the Xia’s straight, we will be naming them Xia0, Xia1, and Xia2, OK? Xia0 being the non-jumped Xia, the original. And as there were two time jumps, the rest should logically make sense.
Well, after Xia is abducted, and Doudou is implanted with a chip, she heads back to the tower with only an hour to get Tsui Hu the data that he needs to build his own time portal. In order to get at the data, she needs three eyeballs. A research scientist, the head research director, and her own. The research scientist is murdered, and his eyeball plucked and given to Xia in order to make getting to the data easier. (?) Well, she gets the information – and then has a run in with a garbage trash compactor I literally didn’t understand. Well, PHEW, she makes it out of there and down to Tsui, who takes the data, kills her son, and tells her that if she wants to see her boy again, she better time jump. Oh, did I mention he also blew up much of corp A’s facility? Yeah, he did that too.
Ok, so with Doudou dead, Xia0 runs back to the tower, in order to jump back in time and save her son. She jumps an hour and fifty minutes, and out of the portal steps Xia1. And Xia1 knocks herself (Xia0 – to be clear) out, and puts her in a storage locker. Xia1 steals the data, and hauls it back to Tsui – but there is actually no data on this data drive. But by keeping a gun pointed at it, she is able to get Doudou, and flee before they realize there is no data there. (Insert inane car chase.) And at the end of the car chase, Tsui shoots Doudou, which forces Xia1 to go back to the tower again.
After jumping again, Xia1 now exits the wormhole and ostensibly becomes Xia2. “Why are you back again?” one of the lab tech guys says, which basically means that each trip she is staying longer than the previous, and thereby not overwriting her last visits. If that makes sense. If not, it’s really irrelevant. Trust me. hahaha. As she leaves the building, this time she calls Xia1 (someone has to explain to me how a cell tower can send a call to an exact duplicate sim, I digress.) and tells her that Doudou is dead anyway, but at the last second Xia2 launches her car across space and time to t-bone Tsui, in order to save Xia1 and Doudou. Xia1 runs off with her – sort of – son.
Insert lame action sequence after lame action sequence with scaffolding and tarps stolen straight from the set of Flatliners. And at the end of the day we learn that the Research Director actually sold all of them out. He assisted Tsui asking only for him to blow up the building. After which Xia2 becomes like this Rambo crazy woman and kills Tsui by stabbing him in the heart.
But, we aren’t in the clear, because now we have three mothers of one boy. And Xia2, you know – the Rambo one – wants to be the mother. But when Xia1 and Xia2 O.K. Corral it, and shoot each other, Xia2’s wound is fatal. But Xia1 says her goodbyes to Doudou on the phone and chucks herself into the bowels of the wormhole. (Causing anyone with half a brain to wonder if maybe she portaled to some other time that we didn’t see get setup.) And that leaves us with Xia0 heading back to be with her son, and she obviously quits the rat race, and raises her son, happily ever after.
Interesting Lessons from the Movie Reset
This movie is going to be remade in America. I guarantee it. And there will be some really major rewrites to it…for sure. For one thing, there is a really thick anti-mom-in-the-workplace aftertaste to this movie that would never go over here in America. It will also add 3 more jumps, which will give it more of a What Happened to Monday feel to it. And the really really hokey special effects, and the blatantly Bollywood rip off car chases and gun fights will be eradicated. But Hollywood will replace it with more of a Sarah Connor from Terminator feel to it. And when you multiply Sarah Connor 5 times, it’ll make for a whole lot of righteous indignation.
But, as a really really well done storyboard, I loved Reset. You know what I mean? Like this one right here from Jurassic Park?
Right? As a storyboard, I LOVED this movie. It’s just too bad that this was the finished product. Hopefully, an Indie film house will convince the copyright holders to let them have a go at it. But I had fun with it. It was free on Amazon anyway, and I enjoyed watching the various Xia’s running about. They shifted the timelines with each jump so significantly that they didn’t really need to see things get too complicated. Definitely not like a Bandersnatch or a Russian Doll level of complexity by any stretch! Anyway, what did you guys think of it? Worth everyone else’s time? I’m not 100% which way I would go with this one…maybe? Looking forward to the American remake anyway. Will be interesting to see which way they go with it.
Edited by, CY
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